Welcome to Episode 78 of Social Media Unscrambled! Where a couple of weirdos, Chris Curran and David Deutsch, attempt (and oftentimes fail) at making social media accessible to individuals and professionals who are a little intimidated by using social media.

…a quick Thank You to our sponsor, TribeBoost! A great way to grow your Twitter audience with relevant and quality people. Learn More Here, and be sure to use Coupon Code “Unscrambled” for 15% OFF the first month 😉 …Chris Curran recently got a lead from a former Disney exec! It works!

We learned from the old maintenance guy Barry that, to start a podcast, you’re “gonna need a couple of horses, a couple of mules.” Just so you know.

Chris Curran started it off by talking about how Apple has dominated podcasting so far. But now Google will get with the times and include podcasts in the Google Play Music app (soon). A HUGE development in podcasting for sure!

Chris then mentioned another podcast he co-hosts called The Profit First Podcast with Mike Michalowicz. Chris went to promote an episode of that show and found that the guest had blocked him on Twitter! (Turns out, by mistake)! Chris had never been blocked online before. Fortunately Gabrielle Fontaine (the guest) unblocked him, because this really hurt Chris’ feelings. In the email exchange between Mike, Chris and Gabrielle we found out that Chris is, in fact, a Russian porn star.

Also, Chris talks about how Twitter rolled out a new feature which allows you to poll your audience. Chris posted a poll about how they feel about auto direct messages. 4 out of 4 respondents — 190% of them, according to Barry — said they hate auto-DMs. It’s a cool feature to try; look for the “pie chart’ icon when you’re composing a tweet.

David then talked about a fundamental but very important question he often gets: Which social media platform is right for me and my business? The answer is, in a nutshell – it depends on where your audience is. And, crucially, when you are there you can’t just sell but instead give to them. Although this might be counterintuitive it is important that you spend your time on social media offering something to your audience rather than getting something from them. So ask your audience what they want: more money, better job, but mostly they want to eat. So feed them free food and they will come!

Chris then talked about his experience with Yelp after moving. He recently moved to Colorado from exotic New Jersey and went to change his business address on Yelp. Yelp however would not approve the change because (they said) the new address had to be put somewhere else online or they wouldn’t believe it. To fix the problem, Chris had to change the address on his website which allowed them to fix the address issue. While a little annoying it does make some sense – after all, not everybody is as nice and honest as Chris, and oftentimes they will use little tricks to try to scam people.

Chris then shared a difficulty he has with social media: Too many accounts with not enough time to use all of them, coupled with having “content out the wazoo,” as he says. To manage this, Chris uses the Buffer app, which schedules your Tweets in advance. So he dedicates 30-60 minutes every Tuesday morning to schedule his social media content to publish automatically over the next week. It’s a great time-saving tool which takes a lot of his stress away from sharing so much content. The key: Don’t be spammy. Spammy is basically repeating the same content 7x/day and overly self-promotional.

David then talked about Streak, a gmail CRM integration (customer relationship management helps keep track of your sales pipeline.) It also helps schedule emails and see if someone viewed your email. David would also love to see a CRM integration with LinkedIn, which doesn’t seem likely in the near future. David also talked about how the hacker group Anonymous outed several people on Twitter as members of the KKK. Follow #opkkk for more information.

Anyhoo, Chris discussed an event at an event at a local Colorado Springs radio station (KCMJ) and how a woman named JL delivered a presentation. JL did a live Periscope broadcast to connect with her fans before her in-person presentation. It served as a hello and a commercial of sorts for her fan base, allowing them to hear directly from her on location.

David brought up how his friend, Brian, believes that Twitter is useless. One of the greatest ways to use Twitter is using hashtags at conferences and association meetings. This allows people to have open conversations using these hashtags, which allows for a potentially huge global conversation about all kinds of topics. Chris added that people can have their own micro-conversations with their own audiences, too. Chris brought up the issue of Facebook hashtags. Are they useful? Chris doesn’t even know how to search hashtags on Facebook. David says he doesn’t know anyone who uses it effectively; it’s mostly used ironically.

Then Chris discussed LastPass, a way to share passwords securely with others without actually giving away your passwords. Primarily though, it’s a great way to keep all your own usernames and passwords in one safe place. After you allow LastPass to remember your username and password for a particular website, in the future when you log in LastPass will fill in your username and password for you. If you have lots of accounts everywhere this is a great tool.

Chris also mentioned that he’s a member of many Facebook groups and was concerned about how to keep up-to-date with all of them. Good Facebook groups can keep people in touch with each other and foster important, fun conversations. Chris belongs to ABBO (accountants, bookkeepers and business owners) and Voice-Over Camp. He wasn’t sure how to stay in touch with the group. David suggested Chris turns on alerts for those groups which will keep him up-to-date of the discussions happening there. When he gets an alert, he can quickly scan the message and comment if he wants to, and ignore the conversations he doesn’t want to participate in.

Finally, a letter to the Social Media Therapists:

Dear Cathartic Chris and Doctor David,

The other day I was on LinkedIn and got a marriage proposal from a person in Russia. They are quite attractive and claim they have a lot of money in a Nigerian bank account, which I could also access, but only if I became a co-depositor on the account and put $5,000 into it first.